105 years' worth of advice

WEST POINT - Back in the days when he sat in a high chair for meals, Bill Hoffman's brothers nicknamed him "Happy" because of his cheerful response no matter what they gave him to eat.

Dana M. Nichols

WEST POINT - Back in the days when he sat in a high chair for meals, Bill Hoffman's brothers nicknamed him "Happy" because of his cheerful response no matter what they gave him to eat.

That was more than a century ago.

Now, Hoffman cooks for himself. He's still happy, and, as he turns 105 today, he said that the upbeat frequency to his life might partially explain why it has been exceptionally long.

"When I was working, I never tried to climb the corporate ladder," Hoffman said during an interview Monday afternoon at his West Point home. "These high muckety-mucks in charge of things, they have a lot of stress."

Not that he hasn't had his share of danger and heartache to face. When he was only 4 months old, he had a brush with death.

Hoffman doesn't remember it, but family members told him that the home where they lived in Washington, D.C., caught fire. The infant Bill was asleep on a couch. His mother was outside. Intense heat and smoke stopped her when she tried to get inside to save her child. A passing man plunged into the smoke and plucked baby Bill off the couch.

"That was the closest call I ever came to losing my life," Hoffman said.

Luck allowed him to avoid the world wars that killed many young men in the first half of the 20th century.

"I was too young for the first one and too old for the second one," Hoffman said.

Hoffman's parents divorced while he was a child. At 14, he left school to work as an office boy for Bell Telephone Co. to help support his mother. When he was 18, his mother died at age 47.

That was 1926. That same year, he enlisted in the U.S. Army's 7th Calvary. His three-year enlistment ended in November 1929, a month after a stock market crash had plunged the nation into the Great Depression.

So Hoffman re-upped, this time to the Army Air Corps. "I flew a PT-13," he said.

Two years of that hitch were at Mather Field in Sacramento, which gave him a fateful introduction to life in California. He was discharged in Louisiana but returned to Sacramento.

He married Luana Naomi Jones. His only child, a daughter, was born in 1934. Hoffman and his wife divorced in 1949.

During the Depression, Hoffman worked briefly for the Works Progress Administration. From 1935 to 1942, he worked for Bercut Richards Cannery. From 1942 to 1969, he worked as a civilian employee at Mather Air Force Base.

His daughter, Sharolyn Medlock, 78, remembers frequent car camping trips during her childhood, often with improvised shelters made from blankets.

"We didn't have tents or anything like that," Medlock said.

Medlock said she was living with her husband in Waco, Texas, when she gave birth to Hoffman's first grandchild in 1953.

A few days later, her dad showed up, unannounced, on her doorstep.

"He never told me he was coming or anything; he wanted to surprise me. He drove all the way from Sacramento to Waco, Texas," she said.

Hoffman remaried in 1955.

After retiring in 1969, he and his wife, Gertrude, moved to West Point to a house on a Christmas tree farm in which they were partners.

They also devoted themselves to travel. Hoffman speaks especially fondly of several months they spent traveling in Europe in 1970.

He put a large camper on the back of a Ford F-250 pickup, and he and Gertrude used it to roam the American West searching for arrowheads and bottles.

Gertrude Hoffman died in 2001. Now Bill Hoffman lives alone. But his 2006 Subaru carries him to friends and family. Each year, he still drives to see his dayghter in Yuma, Ariz.

In 2010, he learned to use an iPad.

Is there any secret to his longevity? Not according to Hoffman.

"I tell them there's no secret what God can do," Hoffman said.

Hoffman said he prays every day. Yet he is not dogmatic about religion. He was baptized Catholic, attended many different mainline Protestant churches during his life and currently counts himself a Mormon.

He's a Mormon who enjoys an occasional glass of wine. And he smoked cigarettes during much of his adulthood.

If asked, Hoffman will say what he's gleaned from his 105 years of experience: "The best advice is to stay away from stress, live your life one day at a time and never hold a grudge against anyone."